Despite advances in technology, the process of finding and hiring employees is still time consuming and expensive. Because so much time and effort is involved, businesses find themselves devoting a considerable portion of their resources to the task of hiring. Some companies have entire departments devoted to finding new hires, and most have at least one person, such as a recruiter or hiring manager, who coordinates hiring efforts. However, even a skilled recruiter with ample available resources may find the challenge of finding suitable employees daunting.
To hire employees, businesses typically begin by collecting a pool of applicant resumes. Based on the resumes, some of applicants are chosen for interviews; based on the interviews, offers are extended to a select few. Resumes can be collected in a variety of ways. With recent advances in computer technology, it is commonplace to collect resumes over the Internet via email or the World Wide Web. The Internet allows an applicant from anywhere in the world to send a resume in electronic form. Thus, the recruiter now has an incredibly large pool from which to choose applicants.
However, having so many choices can make it even more difficult to choose from among the applicants. A recruiter may be presented with hundreds of resumes in response to a single job posting. Sifting through so many resumes to find those appropriate applicants for further investigation is not an easy task and cannot be easily delegated to someone with no knowledge in the field. Finding the ideal applicant can be like finding the proverbial needle in a haystack.
One way of winnowing down the number of applicants is to enter resumes into an electronic database. The database can then be searched to find desired applicants.
The database approach can be useful, but it suffers from various drawbacks. Such databases typically allow a keyword search, but keyword searches may be over- or under-inclusive. For example, a keyword search for “software engineer” will not return candidates who list themselves as “computer programmers,” even though these two titles are understood by those in the software field to be equivalent.
Another approach is to use statistical correlation. For example, after a review of many resumes, it may be determined that 85% of those resumes with the word “Java” also include the word “programmer.” Thus, it can be assumed that an applicant specifying “Java” should be returned in a search for “programmer.” However, some such statistical correlations may be misleading, leading to nonsensical results. For example, a person working in a coffee shop may include the word “Java” in a resume, but those with experience in coffee are not expected to be provided in a search for programmers.